Cultural Bytes, May 24, 2012

- May 24, 2012

“David Richard Gallery opens in the Railyard Arts District…”

Cultural Bytes for 24 May, 2012

Color Affect, a solo exhibition for painter Robert Swain has been set as the inaugural exhibition in the new David Richard Gallery in the Santa Fe Railyard Arts District. The show opens May 25 and runs through June 23, with an opening reception on Friday, May 25 from 5 to 7 p.m.

Swain has spent his entire career studying how humans interact with and feel color and devising a unique system for organizing over two thousand colors, which informs his highly systematic approach to painting over four-plus decades. With his work, Swain has gone beyond how we perceive the physical effects of color to how we experience the emotional and physiological sensations produced by color in certain arrangements and configurations.

And, these items in The Guardian and The Economist
Orange, the global IT and communications services provider has decided to withdraw its future support for the world’s most important literary prize for women.

Orange announced that it will not be renewing its sponsorship of the prize for women's fiction that has borne its name since the award's inception 17 years ago. In the words of the prize organization, the prize was set up to "celebrate excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing from around the world." The award has been given annually to the best book by a woman written in English.

Winners are presented with a check for £30,000 (almost $50,000) and a bronze figurine known as "the Bessie". American Barbara Kingsolver won the award in 2010. Read more at The Guardian.

The price of being female
I read an interesting article in The Economist about the relative prices paid at auction for works of art by women and men. The basis of the article was a recent post-war and contemporary sale at Christie's earlier this month that had sales totaling $388 million. It points to the disparity in prices paid for works by women artists, in relation to those paid for works by males. Proceeds on all the works by women artists in the Christie's sale tallied up to a mere $17 million—less than 5% of the total and not even half the price achieved that night by a single picture of two naked women by Yves Klein. Indeed, depictions of women often command the highest prices, whereas works by them do not. Read the full article at The Economist.

Meanwhile, male artists are having their problems, too. A painting depicting the South African president, Jacob Zuma, with his genitals exposed has been vandalized, leading to ugly scenes at an art gallery in Johannesburg. The controversial painting by artist Brett Murray has been challenged in court by the African National Congress (ANC) as being racist. Still waiting for a hearing in court, the ANC’s case was upstaged by two critics who took a more direct approach at the gallery where the work was being shown.

As detailed in The Guardian: “One man painted a red cross across Zuma's face and penis while a younger man spread black paint over the image. The younger man was reportedly assaulted by security guards. The 1.85-meter-high painting, entitled ‘The Spear’, has bitterly divided South Africans, with the governing African National Congress (ANC) describing it as ‘rude, disrespectful and racist’, but others defending the artist Brett Murray's right to freedom of speech.” Read more and see the video of the incident at:The Guardian.